Mrs
by scuttlesworth
Summary: Mrs. Hudson.


Her boys. Her two boys. Oh, they could be just tenants, like any couple renting a flat; but they're not, not really. Only family can give you what they gave her: amusement, confusion, irritation, frustration. Joy, kindness, protection, bemusement. Pain.

Pain like her heart is breaking all over again. At her age, really. She's long over it all; her son, her husband, Florida. The first time she met him was so very clear, hyperreal in the dim jail cell the Americans had put her in. A detective from London, her husband said. Young but very keen. He'd sort thing whole thing out. And her husband had held her hand while she cried in pain and confusion. He'd held her hand.

He was a skinny, suited, formal breath of England, a whiff of smog and smoke and fog in the scentless Florida air conditioning. Her husband had hired him. Former junkie, young, untried, unproven. She knows now what she didn't know then: that hiring Sherlock was a face-saving thing, a way to show the world he was doing everything he could while secretly sabotaging her. Another clever lie in a series of clever lies. Her husband hired his own death, thinking Sherlock just a former junkie sucking money off the gullible rich, the sort to never produce results. Her husband was a fool, of course. The symmetry of it delights her, when she thinks of it.

He walks into the room where they're holding her, looks about. Concrete walls, one-way mirror, pale green paint, ugly tile ceiling. Sees the tears and confusion on her face. Sees her holding her husband's hands. Immediately insists on speaking to her alone; her husband protests, but the young man has arrogance and entitlement down to his very bones and her husband never stands a chance. He's practically shoved from the room by the young man's words: client confidentiality (but I'm the client, her husband says, and the young man sniffs disdainfully. Hardly, he replies, you're just the one who'll pay.)

In the end she is left alone with him, a strange young man with strange pale eyes who is constitutionally incapable of holding still. Everything about him moves: his hands, his legs, his eyes. And then he is abruptly as motionless as a statue, and she looks at him with the fascination of a mouse looking at a snake, and his face changes. He does not touch her, but his eyes hold hers, and he says I'm so sorry. So very very sorry.

And she sits up straight. Her tears dry up and she feels everything settle down into itself. All will never be quite well again, not really. She has lost her son. That can never, ever be made all right, not in all the universe and all of time. But with just a few words reality has come back and everything is solid again. She sniffles once and then nods her head. What's your name, then, lad?

And he smiles, a brilliant genuine little smile, and nods at her. Sherlock Holmes, he says, as though he both thinks she should know exactly who he is and as though he has no expectation she'll ever have heard of him, all at once. She blinks. Oh, you poor thing, she says without a moment's thought, and he cracks a smile again. This one has irony in it. Precisely, he says dryly, and then he leaves but it's all right. It really is, now; she knows she'll live. The world which has cracked will be made whole. Not immediately, not right away, but eventually.

It's only later that she realizes, while she holds his hand at the arraignment (and hadn't he looked shocked when her little fingers twisted into his long cool hands under the cover of the courtroom bench, but he hadn't moved away) that his apology that first day was because he already knew about her husband and what she was about to loose. She holds his hand the whole time they discuss in clinical, public detail what her husband did, how he killed their son, her bright light, her only boy. How her husband planned the whole thing. Set her up.

The Americans are enthusiastic, dramatic, romantic, pragmatic and bloodthirsty. They like her husband as a killer better than they ever liked her, and so they take Sherlock's deductions and use them to build the same lovely cage around him that he tried to build around her. Except that in his case there's so much clear evidence of premeditation that when it comes to sentencing they call for the death penalty.

She should be shocked but the district attorney, a sweet older man with a Brooklyn accent who has taken her out to dinner twice to discuss the case, has long since forewarned her. She looked at him and said, clearly and firmly, good. It isn't until later, in the dingy musty foreign little motel room, that she really cries. That she cries for the loss of everything she had.

She returns to England. The case has not crossed the pond; it was barely enough to make the American papers, and it hasn't touched London at all. She thinks, now, that if it had been the days of the Internet this would not have been the case; but that was a different time entirely. Her friends don't even know until she is back and tells them that her husband is dead. (He's not, not yet, but he will be in a few years. Close enough.) There is a brief scandal. She rides it out.

She considers leaving their flat. Looks around and sees her son in every room, running, playing, laughing, crying, demanding. Clear and bright. She sees her husband as a shadowy ghost, barely there, a dim smudge. She does not leave; instead, she starts letting the rooms out. Just the one upstairs, nothing more.

She tracks Sherlock down. Over and over, once a month, she finds him wherever he's ended up and makes him eat. Talks to him. Pries him loose from his thoughts which grow black at times. Forces tea, and scones, and jam down his throat with steely will couched in fluttering blankness. He sees through it, of course, and raises his cuppa in acknowledgement. Game and match, there.

She thinks it's such a sad thing. He's so bright. He'd make such lovely children with some woman, but she can't imagine the woman who could match him. He will be alone, that one, forever.

He's not, though. He moves into her flat upstairs and not a day later he's hauling an older man up, through her door, dragging him along in his trail like a confused fish caught in the wake of a motorboat. The man is a sweet gentleman, a military fellow and a Doctor. Reminds her of her uncle, the one from the war. But he's got a streak in him, like the best ones do - all nice and kind but with a fierce joy in the hunt. Proper British, she thinks fondly. Makes him tea. Loves him, just a little, straight away. He's the sort who always gets overlooked until you take a good close look at him, and then you wonder how you never noticed all his fine parts. Trust Sherlock to spot Quality straight away; that boy notices everything.

They are inseparable for two years. And then her bright boys. Oh, her sweet natured John and her fierce dark Sherlock. They're gone.

Sherlock. Son of her heart. The sort of boy any mother would fear for and burn with pride in. How she has loved him so. And John, steady John, kind John, strong solid always-underestimated John who is still here in London but oh so very far away, his heart all in pieces.

She's truly lost the one; she refuses to loose the other, not while there's breath in her bones. She finds him wherever he is. London's landladies are no slouch when it comes to tracking people down - just you try and get away without paying your rent and you'll see. He doesn't want to be found, but boys never do want the things that are good for them, after all.

Over and over, once a month, she finds him wherever he's ended up and makes him eat. Talks to him. Pries him loose from his thoughts which grow black at times. Forces tea, and scones, and jam down his throat with steely will couched in fluttering blankness. He sees through it, of course, and raises his cuppa in acknowledgement. Game and match, there.


End file.
